´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Nottingham on behalf of Sidney Rising with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

One Sunday my mother, my cousin, Doris, and I sat down for Sunday lunch and had hardly finished when the air raid siren went.
We sat in the back room of the house and on the side of the coal fire was a saucepan full of boiling water and a joint of ham which was cooking nicely.
Shortly after the siren had sounded the sound of aeroplanes was overhead and U went into the garden to watch them, there were British and German planes flying around each other and guns were fifing from the aircraft, men were coming down on parachutes with aircraft flying around them as if they were protecting then until they were safely on the ground.
The newspapers reported later, that on this day the Battle Of Britain was fought over the skies of London.
It was whilst I was watching the battle with boyish enthusiasm that my mother called to me to move indoors and to go down the coal cellar with them where it would be safe.
Each time a bomb dropped, the earth and walls shook and coal dust was scattered everywhere and over all three of us.
We all sat there blackened and frightened and waiting for the next bomb to drop. A bomb could be heard rushing thought the air, then the impact could be felt depending on how close it was. As we sat there in tense expectation we didn’t have to wait long before a bomb ‘crunched’ and exploded very close to us, the walls trembled once more.
The electric light in the cellar went out and once again the air was black with coal dust. Doris, my mother and I climbed the cellar steps very slowly not knowing if there was still a house above us.
We found the front door of the house no longer there, the front door was halfway up the stairs and the house on the other side of the road was just a pile of bricks and rescue workers were trying to reach the lady occupant of the house who had gone into the house from her shelter to examine a joint of meat which was in the cooker when the bomb dropped.
Fortunately, she was later rescued unhurt from the debris. My mother was also concerned for the joint of ham that had been left boiling in the saucepan on the fire.
We all searched for the saucepan looking under all the bricks, plaster and glass that had come down in the house, but there was no sign of the saucepan.
Eventually, we looked outside the house and my mother found it on the railway embankment at the bottom of the back garden.
It had been blown by the blast from the fireplace in the rear sitting room, through the window, down the length of the back garden and when my mother found it the lid was still on the saucepan and the joint of ham was still inside.
We continued to search inside the house to see what the full extent of the damage was. All the furniture belonging to Doris and her husband was damaged beyond repair. Later in the day my father returned home from work in a state of shock because he had been told that a bomb had dropped in his house and all his family had been killed. Later in life he developed sugar diabetes and put it down to the onset of this to the shock he received on that day.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.